Session 9: Language Learning in Virtual Worlds

2nd Global Conference

Monday 12th March – Wednesday 14th March 2012
Prague, Czech Republic

Bringing Playfulness and Engagement to Language Training Using Virtual Worlds: Student Experiences, Results, and Best Practices From a Virtual Language Course
Eero Palomäki and Emma Nordbäck
Aalto University, Finland

Three-dimensional (3D) virtual worlds (VWs) offer new value creation and business possibilities for globally distributed language training. They incorporate playfulness, social interaction and exploration. Student experiences and best practices of implementing language training were gathered from a language-training case study at Aalto University. A highly graphical VW, Second Life, was used to activate the students and their subject vocabulary.

Multi-user VWs provide a way for the students to practice normal work-life events such as meetings, presentations, or job interviews in a foreign language. In this experiment 33 intermediate-level students participated into the course, that included a small talk situation of introducing a new worker into his new workplace and completed a laboratory exercise in a foreign language.

The course succeeded in activating the students and most of the students enjoyed the virtual learning. The students became engaged in social situations and used foreign language in task-based communication as a tool for achieving goals. They acted more relaxed than in a classroom environment and many felt that the level of interaction was higher than in traditional classroom teaching. The results revealed that it is possible to train foreign language with authentic work tasks in a simulated environment. According to the teachers, the students used foreign language more openly in the VW, without worrying about making mistakes. Unfortunately, technological shortcomings were still a hindrance for implementing language training in VWs successfully.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

Exploratory Virtual Ethnomethodology: Are We Speaking the Same Language?
Moira Hunter
Ecole Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais
France

3D immersive virtual worlds have been increasingly used for education and training, offering an attractive platform for flexible, collaborative and experiential learning across disciplines and geographical frontiers.  However, students of architecture may not necessarily perceive these environments as learning and work tools but rather as game spaces with little relevance to their immediate educational or future professional needs. An innovative course to develop awareness about and an understanding of ways in which virtual worlds are used in design and architectural daily practice was set up.  The dual-focused course design also aimed to enhance second language learning (L2) of, in and through content.  Students explored and discovered the routine incorporation and use of 3D immersive virtual world technology in architectural design practice by professional practitioners through commissioned replica, prototype, hybrid and non-commissioned creative design builds.

As an exploratory study of virtual ethnomethodology, collected data was examined to render practical actions and activities accountable or visible. A constitutive analysis of concerted social interaction or cooperative work in and through the artefacts of language and 3D references within Second Life (SL) was made.  The contextual availability of sense-making in real-time and real-world settings within virtual architecture practice focused on language-in-use through real-time situated awareness-raising pedagogical tasks in which both language- and technology-in-use were the vehicles for collaborative and communicative mediated activities.

Two emerging phenomena were analysed; scaffolding of language-in-use and sense-making of virtual artefacts through language-in-use.  Selected highlights of instances of activity as-it-happens are presented to illuminate procedural methods applied by participants to accomplish collaborative learning in real-time.  The relevancy and appropriateness of language-in-use and the nature of the situated language together with applied ethnomethods can bring fresh insights to and inform pedagogical re-design of this course.  The advantages and disadvantages in adopting a virtual ethnomethodological approach in the specific settings are discussed.